The present invention relates to a diet for suppressing the absorption of saccharides from the intestines.
As it is called an age of satiation, in recent years, people have come to enjoy the table full of variety and delicacies, and while the intake of sugars, starches, and the like becomes excessive, the quantity of people's exercise has decreased, so that people have become corpulent from their early childhood and are susceptible to various geriatric diseases such as diabetes mellitus.
As means of preventing one from having corpulence that will induce geriatric diseases, diet therapies wherein the intake of starches and the like is restricted are followed, but these therapies are tiresome and require one's strong determination. Therefore, artificial sweetenings that are not absorbed into the intestines have been developed and used, but these only decrease the amount of sugars and have no relation with the absorption of saccharides originated from carbohydrates, so that they do not provide a complete solution.
To cure a diabetic, a method wherein insulin is administered to suppress the increase in blood sugar has been practiced. Also a method wherein various pharmaceutics are administered to accelerate the secretion of insulin from cells or Langerhans's islands of the pancreas has been practiced. However, these methods are accompanied by diet restriction so that the diabetic is forced to have dull food for a long period of time.
Therefore, diets that comprise, as raw material, Gymnema sylvestre produced in India, having an effect for suppressing the absorption of saccharides and intended for the prevention of corpulence and for the suppression of the increase of blood sugar, have been suggested, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 5023/1986 and 208532/1988.
However since the leaf and extract of Gymnema sylvestre are strong in bitterness and astringency and act on the sweetness receptor of taste cells in the mouth, thereby exhibiting a sweetness sensation suppressing effect that prevents the combination of a sweetener with the sweetness receptor, the commercialization using Gymnema requires various measures.
For instance, Gymnema sylvestre can be used as an oral food only by reducing or preventing the bitterness, the astringency, or the sweetness sensation suppressing effect through many troublesome processes, for example, by causing an enzyme to act on the Gymnema sylvestre in the presence of a farinaceous substance to reduce the bitterness (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2552/1989 and 102028/1989), by adding a cyclodextrin to the extract thereby enclosing it (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 120263/1989), by adding a fat-soluble compound (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 27327/1988), or by coating with a polymeric substance (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 38026/1989).